This is a good point in some sense, but you get into the “tricksy” side of the ontological argument with it. Suppose you are comparing the belief that a particular supernatural entity exists to whom various miracles and plans and worldly outcomes are being attributed, call this entity X. Now compare that to a hypothetically defined entity who is perfect in every conceivable way, maxing out all notional “awesome traits” as much as is logically possible, and call whatever this definition captures Y. One of the traits of Y is that “it exists” because it would be a paltry perfect being who was simply imaginary :-P
If it is obvious from trivial inspection that X != Y, and Y would have the power and inclination to forbid the existence of X or curtail its plans such that the various world outcomes couldn’t have been caused by something like X, then X, as stipulated based on certain worldy facts, must not exist. Someone interested in particular worldly outcomes, like the banning of condoms or the forbidding of women from eating bananas (to take two random examples), might claim that the hypothetical X connected to these worldly issues is Y to dodge this conclusion and buttress their worldly interests.
To me, this technique seems like a potential insult to Y and thus, in some abstract sense (logically conditional on Y’s actually existing in some form or another, and objecting to people being dumb about it, and the worldly issues ascribed to Y actually being dumb) it might even be a form of blasphemy. A lot depends on how you hug the question when unpacking pre-existing poetically expressed claims into expectations for practical consideration, discussion, and nominal truth evaluation.
(AFAIK discerning the relationship or lack thereof between possible Xes and Y is called discernment, e.g. discernment of spirits, or sometimes paracletics. That said, I haven’t been very impressed with the stuff I’ve found. I’m really intrigued by Plantinga’s idea of a defeater-defeater, but I have no freakin’ idea how something like that would work in practice. Or at least, I don’t see how you could get the certainty that Plantinga seems to think is possible. I personally have never had an experience that I felt could not possibly have come from anywhere except God. …Phenomenology is hard, let’s go shopping.)
Is a mean God that much less likely than a benevolent God?
This is a good point in some sense, but you get into the “tricksy” side of the ontological argument with it. Suppose you are comparing the belief that a particular supernatural entity exists to whom various miracles and plans and worldly outcomes are being attributed, call this entity X. Now compare that to a hypothetically defined entity who is perfect in every conceivable way, maxing out all notional “awesome traits” as much as is logically possible, and call whatever this definition captures Y. One of the traits of Y is that “it exists” because it would be a paltry perfect being who was simply imaginary :-P
If it is obvious from trivial inspection that X != Y, and Y would have the power and inclination to forbid the existence of X or curtail its plans such that the various world outcomes couldn’t have been caused by something like X, then X, as stipulated based on certain worldy facts, must not exist. Someone interested in particular worldly outcomes, like the banning of condoms or the forbidding of women from eating bananas (to take two random examples), might claim that the hypothetical X connected to these worldly issues is Y to dodge this conclusion and buttress their worldly interests.
To me, this technique seems like a potential insult to Y and thus, in some abstract sense (logically conditional on Y’s actually existing in some form or another, and objecting to people being dumb about it, and the worldly issues ascribed to Y actually being dumb) it might even be a form of blasphemy. A lot depends on how you hug the question when unpacking pre-existing poetically expressed claims into expectations for practical consideration, discussion, and nominal truth evaluation.
(AFAIK discerning the relationship or lack thereof between possible Xes and Y is called discernment, e.g. discernment of spirits, or sometimes paracletics. That said, I haven’t been very impressed with the stuff I’ve found. I’m really intrigued by Plantinga’s idea of a defeater-defeater, but I have no freakin’ idea how something like that would work in practice. Or at least, I don’t see how you could get the certainty that Plantinga seems to think is possible. I personally have never had an experience that I felt could not possibly have come from anywhere except God. …Phenomenology is hard, let’s go shopping.)
So, you’re saying that it shows that that particular proof of God is flawed?